GUM OF MECAlS LIBERATION STRUGGLE - KORA

The Gathering Rain Clouds
soldiers' personal effects-books, papers, and letters postmarked Mo-
-0.
After wandering around for a while, we piled into one of the vehicles
and drove a few hundred yards to what must have been the center of the
fighting on the perimeter of the town, Here there were trenches and, what
I was not d y prepared for, bodies. Who knows how many had died in
the battle for Mahbes? I counted perhaps 50 Moroccans lying as they had
fden three weeks before, in various stages of decomposition from sun,
wind, and sand. The POLISARIO dead had been buried, but the Momcans
had fled in tanks in disarray. When I asked, I was told the Moroccan
dead would be buried as a humanitarian act, but I do not know that they
were.
I bad been on African battle sites before, but this was the h t time I
had actually seen the dead on the field. It was different from seeing
refugees or wounded in hospitals. It was a shock to me, who had never
shot anything more powerful than the BB gun my father gave me when I
was IQ and who had gone to prison in 1940 protesting the peacetime
conscription before U.S. involvement in World War 11.
Later, as we were returning across the desert toward Algeria, I asked
myself how I came to be at that spot on that day. Why wasn't I preaching a
sermon on this Christian Sabbath somewhere in Colorado, where I was an
ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, instead of being in the
company of devout Muslims fighting for the independence of their country?